It’s not an exaggeration that Hong Kong people’s daily schedule is crazily packed: ten hours of work, lunch appointments, after-work apero, sumptuous dinner and late-night internet surfing on Facebook and YouTube. But all these seem not to be enough; even during commuting time the city’s women tend to spend their entire subway ride on doing makeup because they can’t make it to do it at home before heading out.

That’s why I constantly see woman applying cosmetics during their trip to work. Drawing precisely the eyeliner, putting on mascara, outlining the perfect shape of the eyebrows and filling the lips with glossy pigment from the lipstick –of which the skills need to be very sophisticated to avoid blemishes or mistakes by the ever-moving trains, not to mention the other passengers who elbow their ways in and out of the compartment.

Although I admire very much those ladies who can apply well-crafted makeup despite the hustle of the train, I would prefer doing this at home at ease. Cosmetics are what highlights the best parts of your face and make you more confident. It’s a pleasurable process. Doing it in a rush in public place makes you more stressed – partly because of the risk of drawing the wrong outline with your eyeliner which requires double time for you to fix it, and mostly because the crowdedness add noise to this process and results in unpleasant environment.

What’s better than getting up earlier, turning on some relaxing music and enjoy doing makeup and dressing up at home? It poses less risks to “wear the wrong outfit” or having “asymmetric eyebrows”. We work so hard in the city every day, and we should enjoy the process of enhancing our beauty, instead of rushing it.